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The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Reloaded is a 2003 American science fiction action film, the first sequel to The Matrix, and the secondINSTALLMENT in [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/The_Matrix_(franchise) The Matrix trilogy], written andDIRECTED by The Wachowski Brothers. It premiered on May 7, 2003, in Westwood, Los Angeles, California, and went on general release byWarner Bros. in North American theaters on May 15, 2003, and around the world during the latter half of that month. It was also screened out of competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.[5] The video game Enter the Matrix, which was released on May 15, and a collection of nine animated shorts, The Animatrix, which was released on June 3, supported and expanded the storyline of the film. The Matrix Revolutions, which completes the story, was released six months after Reloaded, in November 2003. Plot Six months after the events of the first film, Neo and Trinity are now lovers.Morpheus receives a message from Captain Niobe of the Logos calling an emergency meeting of all of Zion's ships. Zion hasCONFIRMED [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Final_Flight_of_the_Osiris the last transmission of the Osiris]: an army of Sentinels is tunneling towards Zion and will reach it within 72 hours. Commander Lock orders all ships to return to Zion to prepare for the onslaught, but Morpheus asks one ship to remain in order to contact the Oracle. The Caduceus receives a message from the Oracle, and the Nebuchadnezzar ventures out so Neo can contact her. One of the Caduceus crew, Bane, encounters Agent Smith, who takes over Bane's avatar. Smith then uses this avatar to leave the Matrix, gaining control of Bane's real body. In Zion, Morpheus announces the news of the advancing machines to the people. Neo receives a message from the Oracle and returns to the Matrix to meet her bodyguard Seraph, who then leads him to her. After realizing that the Oracle is part of the Matrix, Neo asks how he can trust her; she replies that it is his decision. The Oracle instructs Neo to reach the Source of the Matrix by finding the Keymaker, a prisoner of the Merovingian. As the Oracle departs, Smith appears, telling Neo that after being defeated, he refused to beDELETED, and is now a rogue program. He demonstrates his ability to clone himself using other inhabitants of the Matrix, including other Agents, as hosts. He then tries to absorb Neo as a host, but fails, prompting a battle between Smith's clones and Neo. Neo manages to defend himself, but is forced to retreat from the increasingly overwhelming numbers. Neo, Morpheus and Trinity visit the Merovingian and ask for the Keymaker, but the Merovingian refuses. His wifePersephone, seeking revenge on her husband for his infidelity, betrays him and leads the trio to the Keymaker. The Merovingian soon arrives with his men. Morpheus, Trinity and the Keymaker escape, while Neo holds off the Merovingian's servants. Morpheus and Trinity try to escape with the Keymaker on the freeway, facing several Agents and the Twins, the Merovingian's chief henchmen. Morpheus defeats the Twins, Trinity escapes, and Neo flies in toSAVE Morpheus and the Keymaker from Agent Johnson. In the real world, Zion's remaining ships prepare to battle the machines. Within the Matrix, the crews of the Nebuchadnezzar, Vigilant and Logos help the Keymaker and Neo reach the door to the Source. The crew of the Logos must destroy a power plant to prevent aSECURITY system from being triggered, and the crew of the Vigilant must destroy a back-up power station. The Logos succeeds, while the Vigilant is bombed by a Sentinel in the real world, killing everyone on board. Although Neo asked Trinity to remain on the Nebuchadnezzar, she enters the Matrix to replace the Vigilant crew and complete their mission. However, her escape is compromised by an Agent, and they fight. As Neo, Morpheus and the Keymaker try to reach the Source, the Smiths appear and try to kill them. The Keymaker unlocks the door to the Source, allowing Neo and Morpheus to enter and escape from the Smiths, but the Smiths kill the Keymaker while he tries to close the door to the Source. Neo enters a door and meets aPROGRAM called the Architect, the Matrix's creator. The Architect explains that Neo is part of the design of the sixth iteration of Matrix, designed to stop the fatalSYSTEM CRASH that naturally occurs due to the concept of human choice. As with the five previous Ones, Neo can choose either to return to the Source with his unique code to reboot the Matrix and pick survivors to begin to repopulate the soon-to-be-destroyed Zion, or cause the Matrix to crash and kill everyone connected to it; combined with Zion's destruction, this would mean mankind's extinction. Neo learns of Trinity's situation and chooses to save her instead. As she falls off a building, he flies in and catches her, then removes a bullet from her body and restarts her heart. Back in the real world, Sentinels destroy the Nebuchadnezzar. Neo displays a new ability to disable the machines with his thoughts, but falls into a coma from the effort. The crew are picked up by another ship, the [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Mjolnir_(%22Hammer%22) Hammer]. Its captain, Roland, reveals the other ships were wiped out by the machines after someoneACTIVATED an EMP too early, and that they found only one survivor afterwards - revealed to be Bane. Cast *Keanu Reeves as Neo *Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus *Hugo Weaving as Smith *Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity *Jada Pinkett Smith as Niobe *Gloria Foster as The Oracle *Harold Perrineau as Link *Monica Bellucci as Persephone *Lambert Wilson as The Merovingian *Randall Duk Kim as The Keymaker *Harry Lennix as Commander Lock *Anthony Zerbe as Councillor Hamann *Nona Gaye as Zee *Helmut Bakaitis as The Architect *Neil and Adrian Rayment as the Twins *Daniel Bernhardt as Agent Johnson *Collin Chou as Seraph *Ian Bliss as Bane *Leigh Whannell as Axel *Gina Torres as Cas *Nathaniel Lees as Captain Mifune *Roy Jones, Jr. as Captain Ballard *David A. Kilde as Agent Jackson *Matt McColm as Agent Thompson *Cornel West as Councillor West *Steve Bastoni as Captain Soren *Anthony Wong as Ghost *Clayton Watson as Kid *Tiger Chen as Merovingian´s Ronin Zee was originally played by Aaliyah, who died in a plane crash on August 25, 2001, before filming was complete, requiring her scenes to be reshot with actress Nona Gaye.[6][7] Production Filming The Matrix Reloaded was largely filmed at Fox Studios in Australia, concurrently with filming of the sequel, Revolutions. Thefreeway chase and "Burly Brawl" scenes were filmed at the decommissioned Naval Air Station Alameda in Alameda, California. The producers constructed a 1.5-mile freeway on the old runways specifically for the film. Some portions of the chase were also filmed in Oakland, California, and the tunnel shown briefly is the Webster Tube, which connects Oakland and Alameda. Some post-production editing was also done in old aircraft hangars on the base as well. The city of Akron, Ohio was willing to give full access to Route 59, the stretch of freeway known as the "Innerbelt", for filming of the freeway chase when it was under consideration. However, producers decided against this as "the time to reset all the cars in their start position would take too long".[8] MythBusters would later reuse the Alameda location in order to explore the effects of a head-on collision between two semi trucks, and to perform various other experiments. Around 97% of the materials from the sets of the film were recycled after production was completed; for example, tons of wood were sent to Mexico to build low-income housing.[9] Some scenes from the film Baraka by Ron Fricke were selected to represent the real world shown by the wallmonitors in the Architect's room.[10] The scene where The Oracle (Gloria Foster) appears were filmed before her death on September 29, 2001. Visual effects This article may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may only interest a specific audience. Please help relocate any relevantINFORMATION, and remove excessive detail that may be against Wikipedia's inclusion policy. (May 2014) FOLLOWING THEsuccess of the previous film, the Wachowskis came up with extremely difficult action sequences, such as the Burly Brawl, a scene in which Neo had to fight 100 Smiths. To develop technologies for the film, Warner Bros. launched ESC Entertainment.[11] The ESC team tried to figure out how to bring the Wachowskis' vision to the screen, but because the bullet time required arrays of carefully aligned cameras and months of planning, even for a brief scene featuring two or three actors, a scene like the Burly Brawl as the brothers envision would require more so, and even take years of compositing. Eventually John Gaetarealized that the technology he and his crew had developed for The Matrix‍ 's bullet time was no longer sufficient and concluded they needed a virtual camera (in other words, a simulation of a camera). Having before used real photographs of building as texture for 3D models in The Matrix, the team started digitizing all data, such as scenes, characters' motions, or even the reflectivity of Neo's cassock. The reflectvity of objects needs to be captured and simulated adequately and Paul Debevec et al. captured the reflectance of the human face and Borshukov's work was strongly based on the findings of Debevec et al. They developed "Universal Capture", a process which samples andSTORES facial details and expressions at high resolution, then capture expressions from Reeves and Weaving using dense aka. markerless capture and multi-camera setup (similar to the bullet time rig) photogrammetric capture technique called optical flow.[12] The algorithm for Universal Capture was written by George Borshukov, visual effects lead at ESC, who had also created the photo-realistic buildings for the visual effects in The Matrix. With this collectedWEALTH of data and the right algorithms, they finally were able to create virtual cinematography in which characters, locations, and events can all be created digitally andVIEWED through virtual cameras, eliminating the restrictions of real cameras, years of compositing data, and replacing the use of still camera arrays or, in some scenes, cameras altogether. The ESC team render the final effects using the program mental ray.[11] Music Don Davis, who composed for The Matrix, returned to score Reloaded. For many of the pivotal action sequences, such as the "Burly Brawl", he collaborated with Juno Reactor. Some of the collaborative cues by Davis and Juno Reactor are extensions of material by Juno Reactor; for example, a version of "Komit" featuring Davis' strings is used during a flying sequence, and "Burly Brawl" is essentially a combination of Davis' unused "Multiple Replication" and a piece similar to Juno Reactor's "Masters of the Universe". One of the collaborations, "Mona Lisa Overdrive", is titled in reference to the cyberpunk novel of the same name by William Gibson, a major influence on the directors. Leitmotifs established in The Matrix return — such as the Matrix main theme, Neo and Trinity's love theme, the Sentinel's theme, Neo's flying theme, and a more frequent use of the four-note Agent Smith theme — and others used in Revolutions''are established. As with its predecessor, many tracks by external musicians are featured in the movie, its closingCREDITS, and the soundtrack album, some of which were written for the film. Many of the musicians featured, for example Rob Zombie, Rage Against the Machine and Marilyn Manson, had also appeared on the soundtrack for ''The Matrix. Rob Dougan also re-contributed, licensing the instrumental version of "Furious Angels", as well as being commissioned to provide an original track, ultimately scoring the battle in the Merovingian's chateau. A remixed version of "Slap It" by electronic artist Fluke — listed on the soundtrack as "Zion" — was used during the rave scene. Linkin Park contributed their instrumental song "Session" to the film as well, although it did not appear during the course of the film. P.O.D. composed a song called "Sleeping Awake", with a music video which focused heavily on Neo, as well as many images that were part of the film. Both songsPLAYED during the film's credits. It was originally planned for the electronic band Röyksopp to create the soundtrack, but thisOFFER was turned down.[13] Reception Box office The filmEARNED an estimated $5 million during Wednesday night previews in North America. Reloaded grossed $37.5 million on its Thursday opening day in North America from 3,603 theaters, which was the second highest opening day after''Spider-Man''‍ 's $39.4 million and highest for a Thursday. The filmEARNED $91.7 million in its first weekend,[14] and ultimately grossed $281.5 million in the US, and $742.1 million worldwide. Critical response Reloaded received a Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of 73%.[15] The film's average critic score on Metacritic is 62/100.[16]However, Entertainment Weekly named it as one of "The 25 Worst Sequels Ever Made".[17] Some positive comments from critics included commendation for the quality and intensity of its action sequences,[18] and its intelligence.[19] Tony Toscano of Talking Pictures had high praise for the film, saying that "its character development and writing...is so crisp it crackles on the screen" and that "Matrix Reloaded re-establishes the genre and even raises the bar a notch or two" above the first film, The Matrix.[20] On the other hand, negative comments included the sentiment that the plot was alienating,[21][22] with some critics regarding the focus on the action as a detriment to the film's human elements.[23][24] Some critics thought that the number of scenes with expository dialog worked against the film,[25] and the many unresolved subplots, as well as the cliffhanger ending, were also criticized.[26] Other criticism included the film's perceived lack of pacing.[27] Awards Controversy The film was initially banned in Egypt because of the violent content and because it put into question issues about human creation "linked to the three monotheistic religions that we respect and which we believe in."[28] Category:2003 films Category:English-language films Category:The Matrix (franchise) Category:2000s action thriller films Category:2000s science fiction films Category:American films Category:American sequel films Category:American action thriller films Category:American science fiction action films Category:Australian action films Category:Australian films Category:Australian science fiction films Category:Australian thriller films Category:French-language films Category:Cyberpunk films Category:Drone films Category:Films about rebellions Category:Films about telepresence Category:Gun fu films Category:Kung fu films Category:Martial arts films Category:Martial arts science fiction films Category:Films shot in Sydney Category:Screenplays by The Wachowskis Category:Silver Pictures films Category:Village Roadshow Pictures films Category:Warner Bros. films Category:Films directed by The Wachowskis